kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Oct 24, 2012 9:12:31 GMT -5
Romney isn't doing any interviews either now. We're so close that no one wants to get caught in an out-of-context flub that costs them something even less than a percentage point. The better question is how does an editorial board agree to an off-the-record interview, do the interview, and then pull this? If they want to make their stand against off-the-record interviews, that's great, they have the high road and can make this sort of complaint. But they agreed to the terms, and did the interview, and then complained about it afterwards. PS How do you not prepare your answer for abortion exceptions for rape and incest? That absolutely boggles my mind that two Republican Senate candidates - on the same day - flub the same question that Akin did. Romney did an on-the-record with the Register (wasn't that the abortion legistationnot part of my agenda thing?). The paper endorsed Obama in 2008. What was he afraid of? It makes him look small and scared. And he is doing an interview with Brian Williams. Maybe Williams will ask him about these emails showing that just two hours after the State Department first began notifying government agencies back in Washington--including the White House--that the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was under attack by armed men, State sent out an email that went to at least two people in the White House that said the group Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility for the attack. I see Obama has wilted under pressure and agreed to allow the phone conversation to be public. Just like he came out with a second term "plan" after being hammered for not having a second term agenda. Nothing like leading from behind. PS - I don't know why any candidate ever would talk about rape other than to say it's horrible and it should be an exception to the prohibition on abortion.
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Post by AustinHoya03 on Oct 24, 2012 9:21:24 GMT -5
Couple of random thoughts:
1: I was surprised to wake up yesterday to headlines that Obama won the debate. The actual policy differences were few, and I thought Romney did a good job of presenting himself as a potentially capable commander-in-chief, which is all he really needed to do in this debate. I didn't think that Obama achieved his obvious goal of trying to make Romney seem incompetent/dangerous/incapable. I thought both candidates articulated some decent foreign policy goals, but both seem to lack a foreign policy vision.
So what pushed the President over the edge? The snarky bayonets reference (which I thought was funny but unnecessary)? The fact that Romney started slow (first answer on Libya was somewhat incoherent) and everyone had switched over to MNF or the NLCS by the time he got going?
2: Is anything really going to happen to move the polls much over the next two weeks? If so, what will that be?
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TC
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Post by TC on Oct 24, 2012 9:30:45 GMT -5
Who besides Mourdock flubbed it? He/she must not have flubbed it as badly; a Google search for "senate abortion rape" only pulls up articles from Indiana. The guy from PA, who compared some out-of-wedlock pregnancy in his family to the rape exception. I doubt it gets as much press because it was non-competitive and Casey is a lock, whereas the Mourdock race was pretty close and Mourdock was ahead by a few points. www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/08/28/tom_smith_compares_rape_to_unwed_motherhood_oy_gop_.html
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Oct 24, 2012 9:33:15 GMT -5
Couple of random thoughts: 1: I was surprised to wake up yesterday to headlines that Obama won the debate. The actual policy differences were few, and I thought Romney did a good job of presenting himself as a potentially capable commander-in-chief, which is all he really needed to do in this debate. I didn't think that Obama achieved his obvious goal of trying to make Romney seem incompetent/dangerous/incapable. I thought both candidates articulated some decent foreign policy goals, but both seem to lack a foreign policy vision. So what pushed the President over the edge? The snarky bayonets reference (which I thought was funny but unnecessary)? The fact that Romney started slow (first answer on Libya was somewhat incoherent) and everyone had switched over to MNF or the NLCS by the time he got going? I think those trumpeting that Obama won (or it was Obama in a rout as Carville claimed), are looking at the "Romney did what he needed to do" analysis (basically your first paragraph) and translating that in to "only losers make such statements." It was clear that Romney's whole goal was not to come off as a "strutting warmonger" (NYT term) and to continue to jab at Obama on domestic issues. The left is apoplectic over Romney's performance because it didn't conform to their caricature of him. Before they attack him for being too ready to plunge in to war. Now they're attacking for being a peacenik.
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TC
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Post by TC on Oct 24, 2012 9:35:49 GMT -5
Romney did an on-the-record with the Register (wasn't that the abortion legistationnot part of my agenda thing?). The paper endorsed Obama in 2008. What was he afraid of? It makes him look small and scared. Right - on October 9th. Now he's not doing interviews. They just agreed to make the transcript public anyway, so I guess the paper got their wish - they probably shouldn't have though, and I don't see how their endorsement can be seen as fair at this point. Either way they go on this the other candidate should have a legitimate gripe.
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TC
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Post by TC on Oct 24, 2012 9:53:56 GMT -5
It was clear that Romney's whole goal was not to come off as a "strutting warmonger" (NYT term) and to continue to jab at Obama on domestic issues. The left is apoplectic over Romney's performance because it didn't conform to their caricature of him. Before they attack him for being too ready to plunge in to war. Now they're attacking for being a peacenik. No, they're attacking him for having no consistency and playing both sides of issues (Iraq, Syria, loans for Detroit, Afghanistan, Iran). It's hard to characterize him as a peacenik or a warmonger when you have absolutely no idea what his position is in the next five minutes.
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Oct 24, 2012 9:59:49 GMT -5
It was clear that Romney's whole goal was not to come off as a "strutting warmonger" (NYT term) and to continue to jab at Obama on domestic issues. The left is apoplectic over Romney's performance because it didn't conform to their caricature of him. Before they attack him for being too ready to plunge in to war. Now they're attacking for being a peacenik. No, they're attacking him for having no consistency and playing both sides of issues (Iraq, Syria, loans for Detroit, Afghanistan, Iran). It's hard to characterize him as a peacenik or a warmonger when you have absolutely no idea what his position is in the next five minutes. That's only true if you believe the gross mischaracterizations of his positions. For example, how is he playing both sides of the issue on loans for Detroit?
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TC
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Post by TC on Oct 24, 2012 10:17:59 GMT -5
That's only true if you believe the gross mischaracterizations of his positions. For example, how is he playing both sides of the issue on loans for Detroit? Romney's trying to appear to say that he was in favor of government support - and has even gone on to say that Obama took his advice, when his position was that he did not support loans, at a time when you could not have raised the private money due to the credit crunch. I'm sure you can argue that he supported post-bankruptcy guarantees, but that was pretty much a nonsense position and not really "government support" at all given that you couldn't raise the money for the loans in the first place. At the time he said that you would lose all the money and the companies would go under if you loaned the money out. Is that still his position, given that none of that happened? Romney never wrote the specific phrase "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt", but he did take it upon himself to write a NY Times op-ed and do multiple interviews about it and insert himself into this issue so he could have an "I told you so" position when things invariably went wrong. However, they didn't and it was a giant miscalculation.
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Oct 24, 2012 10:29:02 GMT -5
That's only true if you believe the gross mischaracterizations of his positions. For example, how is he playing both sides of the issue on loans for Detroit? Romney's trying to appear to say that he was in favor of government support - and has even gone on to say that Obama took his advice, when his position was that he did not support loans, at a time when you could not have raised the private money due to the credit crunch. I'm sure you can argue that he supported post-bankruptcy guarantees, but that was pretty much a nonsense position and not really "government support" at all given that you couldn't raise the money for the loans in the first place. At the time he said that you would lose all the money and the companies would go under if you loaned the money out. Is that still his position, given that none of that happened? Romney never wrote the specific phrase "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt", but he did take it upon himself to write a NY Times op-ed and do multiple interviews about it and insert himself into this issue so he could have an "I told you so" position when things invariably went wrong. However, they didn't and it was a giant miscalculation. If you're going to take the position that gov't guarantees are not gov't support, then this will be a very short debate. Also, good to know that everyone is so sure that there would not be private interests/funds out there when we didn't go down that road. Funny, it seems like Fiat was able to see value in Chrysler after Chapter 11 and has increased it's holdings from 20% to 60%.
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Post by Problem of Dog on Oct 24, 2012 10:32:20 GMT -5
Boz, that etch-a-sketch comment sums up the Changeling's strategy perfectly. You can try and obfuscate the issue, which is your default fallback position when you have no ground on which to stand, but neither you nor Mitt can run from that. There is no need to engage in duel of lists of position switches. Ya boy wins that one by a mile. Those are already well documented throughout this thread. The entire contest has been defined by Romney redefining his position based on the way he feels the winds of public opinion blowing, by what's expedient at the moment. The New Yorker perfectly captures Romney in a nice Ba-Zing shot! Norman Rockwell would be proud. You've brought exactly zero to this conversation and, what's more, you know it. And so does pretty much everyone else on the board. I'm done with this. You have no interest in doing anything but name calling. Which you are free to do. Call me up when you have something more substantial. I have to go listen to the President's State of the World address. Oh no! You're "done with this"? Please come back!
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Boz
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Post by Boz on Oct 24, 2012 10:38:36 GMT -5
I am done with that particular conversation.
Don't worry, I'll be around to call you out on your BS from time to time.
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Oct 24, 2012 10:44:58 GMT -5
I am done with that particular conversation. Don't worry, I'll be around to call you out on your BS from time to time. Time to time? It'll need to be more frequent than that.
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derhoya
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Post by derhoya on Oct 24, 2012 10:45:07 GMT -5
"The charts run only through June 2011. What's the level in October 2012?" EasyEd, the number today is still at 285 -- Romney even said so. It is patently false that the number of ships (285) under Obama have been the lowest since 1917. A mere five years ago the number was 278 under George W. Bush Data shows that during the years 2005 to 2008, the number of active ships was 282, 281, 278 and 282, respectively -- each of which were below the levels of 2009, 2010 and 2011. In other words, each of the final four years under George W. Bush saw lower levels of active ships than any of the three years under Obama. The number of surface warships also bottomed out in 2005 under Bush, later rising by about 10 percent under Obama. If you're really interested - read this CRS report that basically summarizes where our fleet stands within its 5yr and 30yr building plan: www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL32665.pdfTo add, the GWOT allowed all services to grab for cash and to fund lots of acquisition projects over the last ~11 yrs and affect their wish lists for the various future year plans. This issue is shown within the CRS reports' table 1 and SS' actual existing ship tables from 2001 to present. When cross referencing the two (a wish list and actual), one sees the Navy has been requesting 310+ ships since FY2002, but our levels have remained in the high/low 270/280s. The last table (last page) gets into the FY12 number which isn't available on SS' link. It stated 12 boats were to be delivered/commissioned in FY2012, but (http://shipbuildinghistory.com/today/statistics/activity2012.htm) this link shows only 6 were delivered to the US Navy in FY2012 (Oct'11-Sept'12). This reduction from 12 to an actual 6 is complicated but generally due USG spending cuts and also industry push back to slow production rates so it has a certain number of yrs of guaranteed labor/work. The latter issue gets into boring industrial complex capacity issues. With all that said, I was watching some a PBS show last night summarizing the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and holy ! How did more ppl not their pants during that time. The USSR had a nuclear tipped torpedo(!) equipped sub and more than a 100 med/intermediate and tactical (think battlefield) missiles on Cuban soil during that time unbeknownst to the CIA, etc. Holy cow! We definitely should cut PBS funding, I hate when organizations spread facts and actually educate. JFK had one hell of a pair following the U2 downing in Oct '62.
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Post by AustinHoya03 on Oct 24, 2012 10:58:05 GMT -5
If you're going to take the position that gov't guarantees are not gov't support, then this will be a very short debate. I suppose that "government guarantees" could be considered part of the larger category of "government support," but it's obvious that TC was referring to direct funding from the federal government, which is definitely different than a government-guaranteed private loan. money.cnn.com/2012/10/23/news/companies/romney-auto-bailout/index.html
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Oct 24, 2012 11:21:23 GMT -5
I was expecting absolutely nothing from Donald Trump, and I'm still underwhelmed.
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Post by HoyaSinceBirth on Oct 24, 2012 11:39:25 GMT -5
What I find incredibly frustrating about this whole process and the debates is that both sides are lying and telling half truths. How are people who are undecided or at least open minded supposed to make a informed decision when both sides are full of crap? And fact checkers are no help because they're just as partisan and full of crap.
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Post by Problem of Dog on Oct 24, 2012 12:06:04 GMT -5
What I find incredibly frustrating about this whole process and the debates is that both sides are lying and telling half truths. How are people who are undecided or at least open minded supposed to make a informed decision when both sides are full of crap? And fact checkers are no help because they're just as partisan and full of crap. That's my thing. If I'm the average undecided voter, I get nothing from the back and forths where someone makes an accusation about the other's record, someone responds "that's not true" and then I end up not knowing left from right by the end of the debate. And if you even think the fact checkers are remotely helpful, then you have to commit two hours to the end of the debate as well to try and decipher who was "telling the truth," which tends to be both candidates, if you twist it one way or the other.
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SSHoya
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Post by SSHoya on Oct 24, 2012 18:12:49 GMT -5
derhoya, thanks for the reference on the CRS report. The lower number of ships under Bush did not impact the USN's qualitative military edge. I am just surprised that Governor Romney's advisers could not properly brief him, and that President Obama did not/could not call him on that factual misstatement, leading me to believe the President wasn't even aware of the ship strength under President Bush.
I also watched the PBS documentary on the Cuban missile crisis. I remember doing the "duck and cover" routine in school in 1962.
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EasyEd
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Post by EasyEd on Oct 24, 2012 18:29:05 GMT -5
The Cuban Missile Crisis was terrifying, real time.
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SSHoya
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Post by SSHoya on Oct 24, 2012 18:31:29 GMT -5
EasyEd, it was. I was in elementary school at the time but kids surely pick up on tension from their parents, that's for sure.
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